CNET First Look

Pioneer VSX-1019AH-K

The Pioneer VSX-1019AH-K delivers an excellent feature set and outstanding sound quality for its price, making it our top midrange AV receiver pick so far.

2:23 / 24 June 2009

Transcript

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>> Hi. I'm Matthew Moskovciak, Senior Associate Editor at CNET.com, and we're taking a look at the Pioneer VSX-1019 AH-K. This is a mid-range AV receiver from Pioneer, and this is one of the best values that we've seen this year. A little bit different from some other mid-range AV receivers. It has a glossy design on front, which looks nice, but it does pick up a lot of fingerprints. If you pop out the little cover on front, you'll see there's some additional connectivity, including a USB port. Now, wh3wt's unique about the USB port is that Pioneer throws in an iPod cable. And you can actually directly connect newer iPods to the unit and browse your music collection onscreen. That's a great added feature because most AV receiver companies require you to buy an extra proprietary iPod dock that can cost as much as a $100.00 just to offer that functionality. So the fact that it's built in is a huge plus. Not only can you browse your iPod onscreen, but the Pioneer also has a graphical user interface for set-up and changing settings. The GUI made initial set-up really easy, although we do wish that some of the other, more advanced features wee included there because it was difficult to hunt around and find them on the remote. If you look around back, you'll see there are four HDMI inputs, which handle both high-definition video and high-resolution audio. That's enough for most home theater, although it's worth noting that the similarly priced Onkyo has six HDMI input. There are also a couple of analog video connections, but like almost every receiver these days, note that there are no S-video inputs. Now, on top of the excellent feature set, we also thought the Pioneer had outstanding sound quality for the price range. This is one of the best receivers that we've listened to for under $500.00, and in addition, we also thought that it's video processing was adequate. Most AV receivers actually have pretty poor video processing. Well, this one, we didn't feel so good when we upconverted our analog signals up to 1080p over HDMI. All together, with its iPod connectivity, outstanding sound quality, the graphical user interface, and the fact that it does a decent job upconverting your analog signals, that makes the Pioneer the best midrange AV receiver we've reviewed so far this year. I'm Matthew Moskovciak with CNET.com, and this is the Pioneer VSX-1019 AH-K.
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